3. Cal Poly’s most famous football alumnus: John Madden, class of 1959. Madden also was a catcher on Cal Poly’s baseball team.

4. Cal Poly enters its 95th season of college football but has only been FCS or I-AA for the past two decades.

5. In 1960, Cal Poly suffered one of the first team tragedies in college football when a team plane crashed at the Toledo, Ohio, airport following a game at Bowling Green. The crash claimed 22 lives, including 16 players.

6. Although Colorado State is 0-2 to start the 2013 season, the Rams are riding a three-game home winning streak dating to last year.

7. CSU has played five true freshmen: DL Austin Berk, LB Deonte Clyburn, WR Rashard Higgins, S Jake Schlager and DB Tyree Simmons. With injuries to several veteran wide receivers, there is a chance that Higgins may be joined by another newbie wideout or two on Saturday.

8. CSU head coach Jim McElwain made two stops in California while climbing the career ladder, but only for a year each — as quarterbacks coach of the NFL’s Oakland Raiders in 2006 and as offensive coordinator and quarterbacks coach at Fresno State in 2007.

9. The Cal Poly roster lists no player from Colorado, but CSU has 19 Californians.

10. This is the first meeting in football between the two schools.

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New CSU football coach Jim McElwain with his family at his introductory news conference in December. With him are children JoHanna, Jerret, and Elizabeth; and wife, Karen.

My story on new CSU coach Jim McElwain is in the Tuesday newspaper and posted online. Read it here. By necessity, it is a snapshot of our extensive interview, conducted last Friday before the confirmation of the Mountain West-Conference USA merger. As I did with a similar piece about CSU President Tony Frank in December, I’ll pass along a more extensive transcript of our conversation here. Some of this touches on what he has discussed since his hiring; much goes beyond that. I’ve eliminated what I used in the story, so this is supplemental. Read more…

During a week in which the National Football League is reflecting on the impact of Oakland Raiders owner Al Davis, Washington coach Steve Sarkisian has his own college perspective.

The third-year coach, who will face Colorado Saturday, was USC’s assistant head coach/quarterbacks coach when he interviewed in Jan. 2007 for the vacant head coaching job in Oakland.

He removed himself from the running just before Lane Kiffin was named to the job. Sarkisian then replaced Kiffin as the Trojans’ offensive coordinator.

Sarkisian said he didn’t think anyone in football made a great impact than the late Raiders owner. “I”m very thankful for all that he did.

“It was a unique experience. This is no manual on how to get ready for an interview with Al Davis,” Sarkisian said at his weekly press conference Monday. “You prepared even harder if you knew you were going to sit in front of Al Davis.”

That’s what Colorado defensive coordinator Greg Brown said when asked about Ohio State playing two quarterbacks, senior Joe Bauserman and true freshman Braxton Miller.

In a 24-6 loss at Miami last weekend, Bauserman (6-feet-1 and 230 pounds, couldn’t have struggled much worse. He connected on just 2-for-14 passes for 13 yards.

The much more athletic Miller, 6-3, 210, went 2-of-4 for 22 yards, with an interception. Miller, from Dayton, Ohio, was rated a national top-50 recruit last winter by the major recruiting sites and chose the Buckeyes over Urban Meyer and Florida.

As of Wednesday morning, Ohio State interim coach Luke Fickell had not named his starting quarterback for Saturday’s game against the Buffaloes at Ohio Stadium.

This much is certain: It won’t be Terrelle Pryor. Rather than sit out a five-game NCAA suspension for accepting illegal benefits, Pryor declared for the NFL supplemental draft and was selected by the Oakland Raiders.

Terry Frei graduated from Wheat Ridge High School in the Denver area and has degrees in history and journalism from the University of Colorado-Boulder. He worked for the Rocky Mountain News while attending CU and joined the Post staff after graduation. He has also worked at the Oregonian in Portland, Ore., and The Sporting News. His seventh book, March 1939: Before the Madness, was issued in February 2014.